Fouts aiming for one final completion for his former coach

"The biggest thing Don contributed to the pro and college game was the fearlessness of throwing the ball and how it can pay huge, huge dividends," says former Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts, here with his coach during a 1985 game.
— George Rose/Getty Images

"The biggest thing Don contributed to the pro and college game was the fearlessness of throwing the ball and how it can pay huge, huge dividends," says former Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts, here with his coach during a 1985 game.
/ George Rose/Getty Images

What Don Coryell had was a great tank commander's vision, and thus the spine and guile to attack Point B from Point A the quickest and most devastating way possible, using X's and O's tactics previous football minds never imagined. Except his policy wasn't so much scorched earth, but scorched air. He not only exhausted opponents' bodies, but their brains.

The more I think about it – and I've been thinking about it more and more lately – the more I'm convinced. Coryell may be the single most important football coach of the past half century. Certainly the most innovative and daring. His fingerprints remain all over the sport at every level, and it's highly doubtful they will be smudged anytime soon.

Because no man had so profoundly brought about change – not just offensively, through his vaunted aerial scheme – but, because of it, also the defensive side of the ball. If you pay attention, it can be seen without a manual. Watch a game. Any game.

And yet Coryell, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame for his work at San Diego State (as an assistant coach he also brought the I formation to USC), has yet to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He's 85 now. The man who remains the only coach to win at least 100 games at the collegiate and professional level is overdue. It's time.

I know I've written this before. I can't write it enough. If his snub is due to his failure to get to a Super Bowl, there's precedence. Sid Gillman, another innovative Chargers coach, is in the Hall, and he never got to one, either.

Sensing this are those who played for Coryell (Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts for one), coached under him (Hall of Famers Joe Gibbs and John Madden for two), and those coaches who faithfully have adopted his scripture (Norv Turner and Mike Martz for another two).

Fouts, who piloted Air Coryell during the glory years with the Chargers, has sent a letter to the Pro Football Hall of Fame selectors – of which I am one – asking that Coryell be seriously considered for induction.

In the letter, Fouts notes the Chargers' passing statistics from 1978-1985. San Diego led the NFL in passing yardage from 1978 (Coryell's first season) to 1983. Miami, with Dan Marino, led in 1984, the Chargers again in 1985.

“Nowhere in the history of the NFL,” Fouts wrote, “has there ever been one team rule a statistical category over such a span of time.”

Coryell the passing master is well known, but Fouts also points out how Coryell's offense affected defenses. Teams were scared to death of this offense. Coryell forced change. Those defensive substitutions you see now didn't happen accidentally. He made them happen.

“I remember seeing the change and how we had to adjust our thinking,” Fouts was saying over the phone from his Oregon home. “They started substituting nickel and dime backs, situational pass rushers, faster defensive linemen, taking out safeties that couldn't run and putting in an extra corner. No question, Don profoundly affected both sides of the ball.

“All you have to do is watch the game with educated eyes and see what's happening now and what didn't happen before Don. And Saturday afternoon. His influence is there. He's contributed to everything. All that spells change, and he changed the game.”

Fouts was the perfect Coryell instrument. Smart, tough, incredibly competitive, accurate, in charge and totally without fear. This was not for the squeamish.

“The biggest thing Don contributed to the pro and college game was the fearlessness of throwing the ball and how it can pay huge, huge dividends,” Fouts said. “What Don did with the Cardinals and Chargers was to utilize the tight end as more than a blocker, but a serious threat down the field, and he spread things out.”

Before serving as the Rams head coach and St. Louis' offensive coordinator when it won Super Bowl XXXIV, Martz was a young San Diegan, attending Madison High during the week and watching Coryell's Aztecs Saturdays and Gillman's Chargers Sundays.

He, as did Turner, studied under wizard Ernie Zampese, who as Chargers (and later the Rams' and Cowboys') offensive coordinator, seemingly stretched Coryell's offense to the limit. Except Martz, with the Greatest Show on Turf in St. Louis, took it ever further, proving there may be no top to Coryell's famed passing tree.

“Just the impact Coach Coryell has had on today's game; it's affected everybody,” says Martz, currently out of football and residing in San Diego. “The game he engineered seeped through the whole league. I can't imagine anyone having a greater impact on the game.

“He has touched this game permanently. He has changed it forever. I can't think of anyone more deserving.”

As Fouts rightfully says: “I would not be in the Hall of Fame myself had it not been for my nine years as Don's quarterback.”

Time for the coach to join him. Don Coryell was football's Ground Zero.